A Little Lamb Lost

Well, that's "a little lamb lost" to our neighbours because their freezer went on the fritz. Luckily for us, that lamb found its way to our dinner table. The other night, Red came by our place to drop off a couple racks of lamb. She and Marquis had come home to find that their freezer had given up the ghost and all their stores had thawed. They weren't going to be able to eat their way through everything quickly enough; so, anything that couldn't be re-frozen was doled out amongst the neighbours.

We offered to have them over for dinner to help finish off the lamb and Red chuckled and responded, "What do you think we're eating for the next couple of nights?"

Good thing I just happened to have some Aussie Shiraz to open with the lamb.

764. 2004 Kangarilla Road Shiraz (McLaren Vale - Australia)

Both Boo and I immediately jumped on the fact that this wine had a nose that just leaped out of the glass. Simply brilliant! The fruit on the palate didn't quite match the nose, but that might have been a good thing. Fruit that big likely would have been way over the top.

Kangarilla Road road is pretty new on the Aussie wine scene. Established in 1997 and with an annual production of 40,000 cases, they practise sustainable farming, incorporating organic and biodynamic methods in the vineyards. The winery is comparable in size and scope to Elderton, the winery who's icon label Cab we tried just the other night. Both are found close to Adelaide - Kangarilla Road is in McLaren Vale which is South of Adelaide, while Elderton is in the Barossa which is North-East of the South Australian capital.

Another - and a bigger - difference is that this bottle is $25 in our market versus the $80 that the Elderton Cab set us back. The Shiraz wasn't quite the wine that the Cab was, but then again, we can grab three times as many bottles and sit back and enjoy that nose for three times as long or as often.

If we can save some bucks on the wine and get the lamb for free, we might be able to pull off a few more dinners like this. Not a bad plan, if you ask me.